In an interview with The Nikkei, Japan’s leading business daily, Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz discusses issues at the top of today’s fiscal policy agenda. In the run-up to the G20 meeting in Japan, he underlines how important it is for leaders to agree on an international system that ensures a minimum level of taxation. He also talks about current national projects such as the basic pension.

The German government created a Sustainable Finance Committee on 6 June 2019. The Committee’s purpose is to advise the German government as it drafts and implements a sustainable finance strategy, as well as to pool existing expertise and foster dialogue between the relevant players. The Committee is made up of representatives from business, civil society and academia, as well as representatives from a number of federal ministries.

In its meeting on 27 May 2019, the German Financial Stability Committee (G-FSC) decided to submit a recommendation to the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). It is recommending to BaFin that the domestic countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) be activated as from the third quarter of 2019 and lifted to 0.25%.